LORD, LET THY WILL BE DONE!(Living in Abundance; Jn. 10:10b, June 2011)

1 Thess. 4:17 tells us to pray without ceasing. But how do we pray? Often times a greater percentage of most prayers are repetitions of wishes concerning things not yet done/ received instead of prayers of appreciation and praises to almighty God for what he had already done; we wish for instance that we would be richer than most; we wish we would build mansions and sky scrapers possibly in the Moon with spare alternate rooms on planet, Mars.; we wish it would somehow be possible for us to live infinitely and just own the world. The reality is that Humanity would rather wish that our Will shall be established on Earth even as it is, not done in Heaven. This is unscriptural. We just keep asking for more irrespective of the fact that some of such supplications may not be in accordance with the Will of God for our lives.

In our quest to constantly and repeatedly ask for more we tend to forget that the proper and scriptural thing to do is to rather subject our personal desires and aspirations to the Will and plan of the creator of Heaven and Earth; The Almighty God (Phil. 4:6, Rom. 9:15-16). We should learn to make prayer requests that finally end with ‘Lord let thy will be done’. God said in Isa. 55:8 that his thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways. To say that God knows more than us is of course a re-statement of the obvious. His thoughts for us as thoughts of peace and not of evil to give us an expected end (Jer. 29:11). For this reason it becomes perhaps crucial that we should learn to pray more in the spirit. When we do, the spirit of God leads us to pray appropriately in accordance with the Will of God for our lives (Rom. 8:26).

When we pray in human understanding, we often insist to God, either expressly or impliedly, that our desires must be met and our prayers must be answered in the direction/magnitude and purpose of our fleshy humanity. People are so subsumed in the “now doctrine’ to answered prayers that we feel that any form of delay to answers to prayer can of course be from the devil. I am a strong believer in the immediacy and urgency of answers to prayers. However one thing we must also factor in, is that one quick/immediate pattern of response to prayer by the Almighty God could be a directive to the petitioner to rather wait, be patient and allow the Will of the Lord to be done on an issue, situation or circumstance. Jesus thought us to pray. He said ‘thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven’ (Matt. 6:10). When we allow the will of the Almighty God to prevail, we shall not make any mistakes in decision- taking. When we are fond of jumping in front of the Lord all the time, due to impatience, it is very likely that we would be prone to taking decisions that would backfire. At all times there is the need for us to subject our wishes and aspirations to the Will of the Almighty God and be obedient to his instructions particularly when God is rather asking us to be patient and wait.

I will tell you a story; a certain brother who trained as a mechanical Engineer had aspired to work for one of the highly- respected oil companies in the world. He had graduated from the university in flying colors and began to search for job with a focus on the oil industry. Before long he received an invitation to attend a series of pre-employment interviews with one of the major upstream oil prospecting companies in the land. This brother was excited, he told everyone that cared to listen about the interview. He involved his pastors, ministers and workers and other men of God in fasting and prayers. The brother went through several different stages of the interview process and passed until they got to the 6th and last stage. In fact at this stage prayers were intensified, fasting efforts were doubled for grace to abound. Some declared; ‘Oh Lord you cannot take your son this far and abandon him. He just has to secure the job’.

However the result of that 6th and final interview came out and our dear brother failed. What? Yes he was the only one that was dropped at that stage. Despite all prayers, fasting, righteousness and holiness this brother still failed. What would have happened? After all his pastor is supposed to be extraordinarily anointed with the type that could be likened to ‘liquid fire’. This brother was dejected; he was confused, he got so discouraged that he didn’t want to continue to go to church anymore. After all the pastor had told him that the Bible says in Jn14:14 that if we ask whatever in the name of Jesus it shall be done; The Bible says that with God nothing shall be impossible Lk 1; 37. Didn’t Isa 65:24 say that before we call God will answer and while we are yet speaking he will hear. So why didn’t the almighty God hear and answer in this one special case?

Many of us are like this brother. In fact there is someone reading this article now that is going through a similar experience. You are virtually asking the question: ‘God where are you?’ Relax Friend! God’s ways are not our ways.

What happened next, in the story of that brother will help us to understand the need to always rely on the Will of the Most High. Let’s allow God to decide for us. The candidates who were successful in the final interview, of course celebrated their success; they received special success cards from friends, colleagues and neighbors while our dear brother rather received sympathizers and condolences from people as if he had lost someone dear to him. Our dear brother couldn’t just understand why God would treat him with such apparent ‘unkindness’ as to leave him out on a huge breakthrough. My prayer is that whether we like it not, may God’s will be done in our lives always in the mighty name of Jesus.

The oil company that our dear brother had applied to was in the habit of sending out its workers in batches according to their Sets of employment. A few months after, the company sent out a certain batch of employees on an official assignment. Some where along the line an accident occurred and everybody in that batch perished. No one survived. It turned out that that was exactly the same interview Set that was employed when our dear brother failed the interview. When the brother heard this he was shocked. He now understood why God forced him to wait. In God’s time, much later, he got yet a good job in another oil company where he served well and duly retired to start his own business. That brother is now a pastor and a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We must learn to surrender to the Will of the Almighty God at all times; we must be ready to obey him always. It is my humble suggestion that our prayers and supplications should always end with ‘Lord let thy Will be done!’ in my life.If you have not given your life to Jesus Christ of Nazareth please do so today for tomorrow may be too late.